But that is the point though. We are only looking to detect what we define as the byproducts of life.
Ok, now I'm not sure what your point is. Do you think we should be looking for byproducts of some type of unknown life? How would we possibly determine that these are byproducts of life?
That I admit to not being sure of. I think we need to determine though what we consider life. As noted we only have one model to go off of but even there as I noted there is a murky gray area. Life might be throughout the universe in forms that we overlook since we have defined it so narrowly. Perhaps a start might be considering self-replication as a sign of life from there we can consider some other factors such as organization.
Assume your argument is correct, what does it mean? Perhaps there is a species that is more technologically advanced than us and able to traverse through space...that still doesn't mean they would have made contact with us. Perhaps they operate under the prime directive. Perhaps they haven't come this way. Perhaps they are isolationists. Perhaps they have contacted other alien races and are no longer intrigued by exploring. Perhaps they have reached a high level sentience where they don't consider us as being anything more than ants. The statistical probabilities for all variables to align to equal "if they exist they would have contacted us" is so low that it is meaningless.
We can only look at the byproducts of life formed exactly like ours, which imo lowers the chance of finding other life significantly. Sure our model of life is carbon-based, but their is definitely possibility for life based on other elements existing on those planets. However it is inconsequential because if we do not know what conditions must be met in order for any non-carbon based life to form, then we could be staring right at life in progress. Hell, life could exist in quanta signatures surrounding planets, which are completely undetectable. We can only look for other life similar to ours because we simply don't know what else to look for
It's also very possible there's life on Titan (Saturn's moon) since they found something in the atmostphere that is unique to a planet (or moon in this case) with life. Plus they already found evidence that life existed on Mars. So anyone that doubts that life exists elsewhere besides earth is full of ****, since there are TWO examples of possible life in OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM.
Well, they haven't found evidence of life on Mars yet. Though that there are signs that there could still be some basic life is encouraging. I'm also optimistic about Titan and expect big things from it. For now though, my money is on Europa and life in its oceans. If we do find life in our own solar system, it will change everything we think of as necessary.
